WARNING: Any binaries here are generally considered to be safe, but I cannot guarantee them to be free from tampering and malware. Further, the software herein may have unforeseen issues which can risk damage to your computer or printer, especially when used with -dUNSAFEMARGINS. Use at your own risk.

Table of contents

• Disclaimer
• Contents
• Introduction
• Documentation and Credits
• Compiling
• Configuration
• Printing
• License

Introduction

You’ll need to be comfortable issuing commands and specifying file paths in a command-line environment in order to use this software, as well as having one of the supported printers connected to a Linux, macOS or Windows based computer. (VMS and others may work also, but are untested.)

For those new to ghostscript, it is a legendary application for handing, converting and rendering Adobe PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Among drivers for numerous other printers is user community contributed support for all of Apple’s dot matrix printers (at least) that goes back to possibly 1988. The old driver worked and was updated over the years, but had some problems and was only monochrome. I have improved and enhanced and colorized the driver and hope you enjoy! Please make sure to let me know right away of any questions or concerns!

This updated driver is included with ghostscript 10.06.0 and later. A precompiled Linux binary is avaiable from the official download site. Windows users must compile from source with the "-contrib" option. (I may make a precompiled Windows binary avilable here in the future.)

Documentation and Credits

• The official ghostscript-10.06.0 documentation.
• The official ghostscript documentation for gdevadmp-][.
• gdevadmp-][ source code (credits are all at the top of the file.)

Compiling

Note: you must use one of the -contrib build profiles (which add WITH_CONTRIB=1 to the build toolchain arguments) when building on Windows, in order to include gdevadmp-][. (Other platforms tend to have WITH_CONTRIB=1 by default.)

1. Get the ghostscript source.
2. Pass WITH_CONTRIB=1 to the build toolchain.
3. Run the executable with -h and look for appledmp, iwlo, iwlow, iwhi, iwhic, iwlq and iwlqc. If you see them, you’re good to go!

If you need more instructions...

Configuration

The Apple Dot Matrix Printer is parallel and its configuration is not covered here, due to the author’s ignorance of parallel ports. (If you have an Apple DMP or are familiar with parallel ports, please feel free to send the relevant configuration command(s) for inclusion.) For ImageWriter users, you’ll need to configure your serial port for 9,600 or 19,200 baud (depending on printer model and configuration), no parity, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit and hardware flow control. For example (for an ImageWriter II on UN*X – untested):

or (on Windows):

Also, you’ll need to configure the printer(s) for the same (possibly by adjusting DIP switches) and also for carriage returns and line feeds for new lines. You’ll need a cable wired for hardware flow control, also.

To briefly test the connection between your printer and your computer after configuration, you may run a command like the following after loading some paper and a ribbon (on UN*X):

or (on Windows):

Printing

Briefly, select your ghostscript device name (rightmost value) from this list:

• Apple Dot Matrix Printer: 120x72 - appledmp
• ImageWriter: 160x72 - iwlo
• ImageWriter 15": 160x72 - iwlow
• ImageWriter II: 160x144 - iwhi
• ImageWriter II (color): 160x144 - iwhic
• ImageWriter LQ: 320x216 - iwlq
• ImageWriter LQ (color): 320x216 - iwlqc

Then:

Where executable is your ghostscript executable (the name varies by platform), devicename is the ghostscript device name from the list above and also the output file devicename. inputfile.ext is your input file (PostScript or PDF.) For example (color ImageWriter II print on UN*X):

or (on Windows):

Then send the output file to your printer’s serial port (on UN*X):

or (on Windows):

Note that it’s probably possible to print directly to the printer from ghostscript by specifying your COM port or TTY line with the -f flag, but that has not been tested.

License

• All of the Artifex and open-source software (in source and/or binary form) available on this page is covered under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) v3.